From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Nanyang Siang Pau
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turned rabidly pro-communist and pro-Chinese language and culture. It mounted
an attack on the government, accusing it of trying to suppress Chinese language,
education and culture, and portraying me as the oppressor in a government of
“pseudo foreigners who forget their ancestors”. We had to arrest Lee Mau Seng,
the general manager, Shamsuddin Tung Tao Chang, the editor-in-chief, and Ly
Singko, the senior editorial writer, for glamorising communism and stirring up

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chauvinistic sentiments over Chinese language and culture. Proof that they were
doing so only for Singapore came from the Malaysian editions of the same paper
that did not carry this campaign.
Nantah graduates were another source of opposition. In both the 1972 and
1976 general elections they raised the issue of Chinese language and culture.
When I tried to get the medium of instruction in Nantah changed from Chinese
to English, Ho Juan Thai, the president of their students’ union, instigated his
fellow students to use Chinese instead of English in their examination papers.
The university removed him from his post as union leader. After graduating, he
contested the 1976 general election as a Workers’ Party candidate, accusing the
government of exterminating Chinese education and urging the Chinese-
speaking to oppose the government or risk losing their cultural identity. He knew
we would not act against him during the campaign. When he lost, getting only
31 per cent of the votes, he fled to London.
The opposition to English as the one common language was unremitting. The
irony was that I was as keen and anxious as anyone to retain the best features of
Chinese education. When I acted as legal adviser for the Chinese middle school
student leaders in the 1950s I was impressed by their vitality, dynamism,
discipline and social and political commitment. By contrast, I was dismayed at
the apathy, self-centredness and lack of self-confidence of the English-educated
students. The nub of the problem was that in our multiracial and multilingual
society, English was the only acceptable neutral language, besides being the
language that would make us relevant to the world. But it did seem to
deculturalise our students and make them apathetic.
However, my education in the English school system gave me one political
advantage – it made me at home in the world of both the English-and the Malay-
educated, and I was not confined to the Chinese-speaking. It made it easier for
me to be accepted as a leader of more than just the Chinese because I was
perceived by the Malays and Indians as a Malayan (later Singaporean)
nationalist, not a Chinese chauvinist. And because I learnt Chinese later, and
they saw my intense efforts to master both Mandarin and the Hokkien dialect, I
was able to relate to the Chinese-educated and have them accept me as their
leader.
In the 1950s the Chinese-educated felt a burst of pride at the resurgence of
China and the Chinese language. The merchants in the Chinese Chamber of

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Commerce were prosperous with the rubber boom which resulted from the
Korean War. In 1953 the Chamber proposed a Chinese-language university in
Singapore for Chinese students in Southeast Asia. Since Chinese high school
graduates were forbidden from going to communist China for further studies,
they believed such an institution in Singapore would attract many students. It
drew support from Chinese merchants in Singapore, Malaya and the Borneo
territories. The leading spirit was a wealthy rubber merchant, Tan Lark Sye, who
personally donated S$5 million, but the project involved the whole Chinese
community and generated so much spontaneous enthusiasm that taxi drivers,
hawkers and trishaw riders all contributed one day’s earnings. When Nanyang
University was opened by the British governor in March 1956, traffic crawled
bumper to bumper all the way from the city to its campus in Jurong, 20 miles to
the northwest. It became the symbol of Chinese language, culture and education
– a symbol the communists captured through their influence with sympathisers
in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, clan associations and school
management committees.
But Nantah faced problems. There were few jobs for its graduates. As
students switched to English schools, they increasingly went to the University of
Singapore, which taught in English. Better students from the Chinese schools
took the English-language Cambridge school certificate examinations as private
candidates, to be eligible for admission to the University of Singapore or some
overseas university on a government scholarship. Nantah responded by lowering
both requirements for admission and pass standards for graduation, further
diminishing its academic reputation and the market value of its graduates. What
finally propelled me to action was a report from the People’s Association that
when applying for jobs, Nantah graduates had produced their school certificates
and not their Nantah degrees.
I decided to make English the language of instruction at Nantah. With the
unanimous agreement of the Nanyang University Council, in 1975 I sent the
minister for education, Dr Lee Chiaw Meng, to be vice-chancellor. He was
Chinese-educated but had a PhD in engineering from London University. His
task was to convert Nantah into an English-language university. It proved too
difficult; the staff were basically Chinese-educated and could not teach in
English. Although they had taken their PhDs in American universities, they had
reverted to using Chinese and lost their English fluency.
The situation was so bad that in 1978 our MPs who were Nantah graduates
asked me to intervene before the university disintegrated. The one whose

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judgement I had learnt to depend upon was Ch’ng Jit Koon, a minister of state.
He had excellent interpersonal skills and had worked closely with me for many
years, including helping to look after my constituency. He convinced me that to
allow Nantah to continue as it was would make for a bigger problem. With the
careers of so many students blighted, the Chinese-speaking would blame the
government for not doing more to save them, and also for allowing Nantah to
collapse. Ho Kah Leong, Chin Harn Tong, Lee Yiok Seng, all parliamentary
secretaries and Nantah graduates, strongly supported Ch’ng’s views.
Most of my cabinet colleagues were against intervention as politically too
costly. Chin Chye and Eddie Barker were set against it. Even Keng Swee,
usually robust and strong-minded, and Kim San, a pragmatist, were not
enthusiastic. They would go along with me if I chose to intervene, but why stir
up a hornet’s nest? They remembered our troubles with the Chinese schools and
Nantah in the sixties. I was taken aback when Ong Pang Boon, Chinese-educated
from Confucian High School, Kuala Lumpur, also expressed doubts. He agreed
with our Nantah graduate MPs on the seriousness of the situation but was
concerned over the political backlash from Nantah donors and supporters in
Singapore and Malaysia. But I could not accept the prospect of several hundred
students each year wasting their future. Since Nantah could not convert its
teaching from Mandarin into English, I persuaded the Nantah council and senate
members to move the whole university – staff and students – into the campus of
the University of Singapore. Both teachers and students would be forced to use
English, subsumed within the larger numbers of English-speaking staff and
students at the Bukit Timah campus.
Whatever their misgivings, Nantah staff and students were immersed in an
English-speaking environment from the beginning of the 1978 academic year.
The majority of Chinese-speaking parents and students accepted this change
from a Chinese-language to an English-language university as unavoidable. The
most emotional opposition came from Nantah alumni. Those in Singapore
understood, even if they did not openly support the change. The Malaysian
alumni were angry and bitter in their denunciation of what they deemed an act of
betrayal. On my part I was sad not to have been able to move earlier, thereby
saving several thousand Nantah graduates from their poor economic status,
handicapped by their inadequate command of English.
It was a painful adjustment, more for the students than for the staff.
University of Singapore staff took over the bulk of the teaching until Nantah
staff revived their English fluency. I spoke to the students twice to sympathise

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with their difficulties and encourage them to persevere. About 70 per cent of
them eventually passed their final joint campus examinations. I had a survey
conducted among the graduates, whether they would prefer to receive a
University of Singapore degree, a Nantah degree or a joint degree. The
overwhelming majority wanted a University of Singapore degree. I decided to
merge the universities as the National University of Singapore (NUS) and award
them NUS degrees. The Nantah campus became Nanyang Technological
Institute, attached to the NUS. In 1991 it became Nanyang Technological
University (NTU). Some Nantah alumni wanted it renamed Nanyang University.
This is no longer an issue of great moment. The old name can be restored if that
is the wish of the graduates of Nantah and NTU. Employers know that the
present NTU graduates are up to standard whatever the name of their institution.
I had the political strength to make those changes in Nantah because, unlike
many champions of the Chinese language who sent their children to English
schools, my three children were completely educated in Chinese schools. When I
addressed students and staff of Nantah on the campus in the late 1960s I could
say that I never sacrificed my children’s education for a political purpose. I was
convinced that Chinese schools were good for them because they were able to
master English at home. However, for their university education, I said I would
not send them to a Chinese-language university. Their future depended upon a
command of the language of the latest textbooks which would be in English.
Every parent, whether Chinese-or English-educated, would come to this same
conclusion. Because I said this at Nantah and had it reported in the press, I was
able to influence the choice of parents and Chinese school students when they
sought university places.
Had my children not done well in Chinese schools, I could not have spoken
with that same authority. Years later I asked the three of them whether they
regretted having gone to a Chinese, not an English, school. They were
unanimous that they were better off for having been in Chinese schools.
Nantah produced a total of 12,000 graduates. Had all of them been educated
in English, they would have had more satisfying careers and made bigger
contributions to Singapore and Malaysia. The problem was one of face. Such
high hopes had been pinned on Nantah at its founding, but the tide of history was
against it. No country in Southeast Asia wanted a Chinese-language university.
On the contrary, they were phasing out Chinese-language schools. Employment
opportunities for Chinese-educated high school and university graduates were
rapidly declining. Even Chinese banks were switching to English to remain in

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business.
After the two universities were merged, I made all Chinese schools switch to
English as their main language of instruction, with Chinese as their second
language. This caused soul-searching among the Chinese-educated, including
PAP MPs. None could accept the need to reduce the teaching hours of Chinese
in these schools, yet all agreed the students had to master English to be able to
continue their studies in polytechnics and the university without spending an
extra year for remedial English. I sympathised with them in their dilemma, but
once they accepted English as our working language, these consequences had to
follow.
As these changes were taking place, I feared we were losing something
valuable in the Chinese school system. I wanted to preserve what was good in
the Chinese schools: the discipline, self-confidence and moral and social values
they instilled in their students, based on Chinese traditions, values and culture.
We had to transmit these same values to students in the new bilingual schools or
we would deculturalise them. When we use English as the medium of
instruction, Confucian values of the family could not be reinforced in schools
because both teachers and students were multiracial and the textbooks were not
in Chinese.
In addition, the traditional moral values of our students were being eroded by
increasing exposure to the Western media, interaction with foreign tourists in
Singapore and their own overseas travel. The values of America’s consumer
society were permeating Singapore faster than the rest of the region because of
our education in the English language.
The changed values and attitudes of younger teachers compounded this
problem. The older generation of teachers had known hardship and seen how
difficult it was to bring stability and harmony to Singapore’s multiracial society.
As I wrote to Keng Swee when he took over the education ministry in 1979,
“They teach a philosophy of life, imbue their students with a sense of
determination, duty and responsibility, and their teachers have got greater drive
and thrust than the majority of the English-medium teachers.” The younger
teachers, all educated in English with Chinese as their second language, were no
longer as steeped in these traditional values.
We wanted to preserve the distinctive traditional values of our different
cultures. The Japanese have been able to absorb American influence and remain

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basically Japanese. Their young, having grown up in affluence, appear less
dedicated to the companies they work for than their fathers, but they are
essentially Japanese and more hardworking and committed to the greater good of
their society than Europeans or Americans. I believed that if the Japanese could
do this, so could we.
I decided to preserve the best nine of the Chinese schools under a special
assistance plan, or SAP. These SAP schools would admit students in the top 10
per cent passing the primary school leaving examination. They would teach
Chinese at the first language level but have English as the medium of instruction
as in other schools. We provided them with additional teachers to enable the
pupils to learn English and Chinese through special immersion programmes. The
SAP schools succeeded in retaining the formality, discipline and social
courtesies of traditional Chinese schools. The ethos in these schools was, and
still is, superior to that of the English-language schools, which tended to be more
slack in these matters. Today most SAP schools, including the once communist-
controlled Chinese High School, are premier institutions with modern facilities
to match their proud history and traditions.
After the Nanyang and Singapore University joint campus solution in 1978, I
decided the time was right to encourage our Chinese to use Mandarin instead of
dialects. It would make it easier for students to master English and Mandarin in
school if they spoke Mandarin at home and were not burdened by dialects. I
launched a “speak Mandarin” campaign for a month every year.
To emphasise the importance of Mandarin, I stopped making speeches in
Hokkien. We stopped all dialect programmes on television and radio, but for the
older generation, we still broadcast the news in dialects. Unfortunately, at
election time we had to speak in dialects, or opposition candidates would have
an advantage. As late as the run-up to the January 1997 general election, some of
the most rousing responses were to speeches in Hokkien. Dialects are the real
mother tongues for the older generation.
It was difficult to change the language habits of Chinese families that
interfered with the learning of Mandarin. Until the 1970s about 80 per cent still
spoke dialect at home. Young workers interviewed on television were not fluent
in Mandarin because they reverted to dialect at home and in their workplace. I
used my standing with the people to persuade them to make the switch. They
knew that my three children had mastered Mandarin, English and Malay and

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respected my views on how to educate children. During our walks in public
parks and gardens, parents would often be talking to their children in dialect
until they noticed Choo and me, when they would look embarrassed and switch
to Mandarin, abashed for not heeding my advice. The switch was especially
difficult for the grandparents, but most managed speaking to their grandchildren
in dialect and understanding their replies in Mandarin. Without this active
promotion of Mandarin, our bilingual policy would have failed for Chinese
students. Mandarin-speaking families increased from 26 per cent in 1980 to over
60 per cent in 1990, and are still increasing. However, English-speaking homes
increased from 20 per cent in 1988 to 40 per cent in 1998.
The opening of China brought a decisive change in the attitudes of Chinese
to learning Mandarin. Professionals and supervisors who knew both English and
Mandarin commanded a premium: there were no more grumbles about speaking
Mandarin and not dialects. We had made the right decision in 1965 at
independence to teach Mandarin as a second language. That seven different
major south Chinese dialects were spoken in Singapore made it easier to
persuade all to convert to Mandarin. Had we been like Hong Kong with 95 per
cent speaking Cantonese, it would have been difficult if not impossible. For
many Chinese Singaporeans, dialect is the real mother tongue and Mandarin a
stepmother tongue. However, in another two generations, Mandarin can become
their mother tongue.
Bilingualism in English and Malay, Chinese or Tamil is a heavy load for our
children. The three mother tongues are completely unrelated to English. But if
we were monolingual in our mother tongues, we would not make a living.
Becoming monolingual in English would have been a setback. We would have
lost our cultural identity, that quiet confidence about ourselves and our place in
the world. In any case, we could not have persuaded our people to give up their
mother tongues.
Hence, in spite of the criticism from many quarters that our people have
mastered neither language, it is our best way forward. English as our working
language has prevented conflicts arising between our different races and given
us a competitive advantage because it is the international language of business
and diplomacy, of science and technology. Without it, we would not have many
of the world’s multinationals and over 200 of the world’s top banks in
Singapore. Nor would our people have taken so readily to computers and the
Internet.

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